September TBR

I’m back, or so I hope anyway. I have been sadly absent from WordPress as a result of being completely steamrolled by my undergraduate dissertation that was due on the 24th August and ongoing illness. I’ve really struggled to get back into blogging for a number of reasons, so this is my attempt to ease myself back in and works well considering that September is almost upon us (how?? why?? when?? etc). So here’s a little update about why I’ve been absent and also my loose plans for this rest of this month, what are yours?

Well, to cut quite a long story short, I primarily disappeared off to finish my 8000 word interdisciplinary dissertation to finish my degree. Because of my disabilities, I couldn’t submit it with everyone else back in April which means that my dissertation needed to be submitted in August and I won’t be graduating until December. BUT, the horror is now over. I am finally done. And I am so glad it’s over because I’m exhausted.

Dissertation proof

During the month of August, whilst hopelessly procrastinating on my dissertation, I also whisked myself and my partner off to Nine Worlds. For those of you who didn’t see my last post, Nine Worlds is an amazing Geek convention in the UK which happens in August every year. Last year I was a speaker on several panels, and this year I ran my own solo sessions; Queer Coding in Disney and Cons-ROAR-vation: Conservation and Animal Rights in Jurassic World. It took a lot of prep, but it was amazing. I got to meet both new and old friends alike, and I miss it all the time. I want to live at Nine Worlds.

After both of these events, my disabilities worsened to the point where I am not able to work at the moment. In addition to my depression and anxiety, and joint pain, I’ve been knocked off my feet by extreme tiredness. I’m sleeping really badly, I don’t have much energy in the day, and the tiredness knocks onto my joint pain causing me to be in varying levels of pain. This has sad and frustrating because it hurts, but also because I’ve had some big plans in the works.

Following the success of my sessions at Nine Worlds and some hugely demoralizing knock backs from job interviews for disability related reasons (i.e. they don’t want to hire disabled people), I decided to re-brand myself and set myself on the path of self-employment. As Red Rocket Panda, I’m aiming to work on a number of things including more blogging, podcasts, videos, twitch streams, pop culture critique, creative writing, and accessible academia. This is turning out to be a little bit tricky at the moment due to my ill health but also proves how essential self-employment would be to a disabled person like me as it gives me the option to work around my illness. To find out more about my story, plans and/or to support me, please check out my patreon! By pledging to me you can become part of the Red Rocket Panda family, and receive a little Red Panda Reward ❤

As part of building my foundations as Red Rocket Panda, I want to focus a lot more on writing articles, and recording videos and podcasts on a variety of issues. I have lots of ideas which I’m really excited to start working on and that I hope will be exciting for you all too! Sadly, I no longer have access to recording equipment at uni so will need to be saving up for a web/cam so in the mean time I will be focusing on articles and, hopefully, podcasts. Here’s a taster of what’s to come this month:

Queer Coding in Disney

Cons-ROAR-vation: Conservation and Animal Rights in Jurassic World

Giving Yourself Permission

Why it’s okay to not have a great time at university

Check out my patreon for alonger list of other content that will be coming along soon, and don’t forget to drop me a comment or a tweet if you’d like me to write or speak about any particular issues!

Because of everything that’s been going on, I haven’t had much time to read (aside from my new copy of the D&D Players Guide but that’s beside the point ;D). My NetGalley list is backed up and is a little bit scary right now as it’s a lot of non-fiction, and let’s not even talk about all the books I got in the Kindle sale. I’ve also found that I hate setting TBR goals as I like to just pick something up and start reading it, rather than plan to read it, nor do I like reading the books everyone else is reading at the moment so I’m not sure what’s coming up in September!

I am currently reading the free copy of Starborn by Lucy Hounsom that I got at Nine Worlds. I don’t usually gravitate towards SFF for some reason, but I have been really enjoying Starborn. I should probably read at least one of my NetGalley books, and I really want to read the copy of Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel which I’ve been eagerly eyeing!

The end of August is proving to be quite good for me in terms of gaming and films so I’m hoping to continue that momentum into September. I’m planning to set up a little movie night once or twice a week to amuse me while my partner is at work. On Monday I live tweeted my reactions to Cabin in the Woods and would love to make this a regular thing. I’ve also been watching Netflix’s Atypical series which I’ve loved and hope to leave you all a little review about what it’s been like watching this as an autistic person.

I’ve been live streamingDream Daddy, which was enthusiastically gifted to me by a friend, and I’m hoping to start playing Dead Before Daylight with some friends at the weekend. I also just started playing Mass Effect which I LOVE and you can check out my daily updates over on my twitter!

If you’ve got a game you’d love to see my stream or a movie to watch for movie night, then drop me a comment or a tweet to make it happen!

This has been a very long post, so well done if you stuck with it to the end. Gold stars all around. I’ve really missed blogging and after writing this post feel rejuvenated and excited for the month to come. Tag along for the journey and keep in touch.